Interspecies Hierarchies and the Female Brain in May Kendall’s Evolutionary Poetry
- Categories
- Article/Artikel
- Magazine Title
- Nineteenth-century gender studies
- Magazine Year
- 2019
- Magazine Number
- 3
- Creator
- Birch, Katy
- Thesaurus
- poëzie, sociobiologie, Verenigd Koninkrijk, 1880-1889
- Description
- In this article the author will focus on May Kendall and the evolutionary poetry that she published in Punch magazine and the “Science” section of her 1887 collection Dreams to Sell. Focusing particularly on Kendall’s responses to the science of craniology and her depictions of evolution’s blurring of boundaries between seemingly distinct groups, Birch argues that Kendall displaces debates about gender and brain size onto other species and presents a reading of evolution that is implicitly anti-hierarchical and that undermines rigid categories.